Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt ( born September 9, 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut, † April 8, 2007 in New York) was an American artist of minimalism. He developed the concept conceptual art (English conceptual art ).

Life and work

LeWitt visited 1945-1949 Syracuse University in New York before he left in 1951 for a year with the U.S. Army in Korea and Japan. In 1953 he attended the " Cartoonist and Illustration School " in New York and worked from 1955 to 1956 as a graphic designer for the architect IM Pei. From 1960 to 1965 he worked at the Museum of Modern Art ( where he became acquainted with, among others, Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Robert Mangold and Scott Burton). Between 1964 and 1971 he worked at various institutes, so at the " Museum of Arts School ", taught at Cooper Union, and at the School of Visual Arts and the " Education Department " at New York University. In 1976 he founded together with Lucy Lippard the publisher Printed Matter to organize a sale of artists' books.

Sol LeWitt's work was based on the constructivism of the Bauhaus and the Dutch artist group De Stijl. Sol LeWitt developed the ideas of these styles further and experimented with architectural space structures, lattice patterns and grid constructions, which he reduced to a minimum. His work was given by the artist firmly in numerous documentaries that reflect his conception of art theory.

In his theoretical work Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, 1967, with whom he became an important stimulator of Conceptual Art, he defined his art as " conceptual " - as opposed to visually oriented " perception of art" - because it primarily for the viewer in mental was interesting ways. Here is the idea, the concept of a work in the foreground.

In his works, which were also exhibited several times in the "Museum of Modern Art " in New York, often recur lattice structures of wood and / or metal. Early works are drawings and prints with fine lines and lattice structures and large geometric mesh objects. From 1968 to follow large colored wall drawings. Sol LeWitt was from 1968 to 1982 four-time participant of the documenta in Kassel.

In 1979, Sol LeWitt, a video work for Lucinda Childs Dance dance piece. Film recordings of the piece are synchronously projected during live performances over a meter high transparent screen to the stage, so that the dancers interact with their cinematic alter ego. The video projection in which the dancers dance on a gridded floor, the piece as a single stage design is used. Dance is now one of the classics of the avant-garde and affected the post-modern dance decisive.

Sol LeWitt lived and worked in Chester Connecticut and Bari.

Exhibitions (selection)

Public collections

  • EVN collection
  • Modern Art Gallery, Schaffhausen
  • Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich
  • Museo d' Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples

Public space

  • Cube, 1984 Merian- Park in Basel, since 2011 in Park Zellweger Uster, Canton of Zurich as a gift of industrialist and philanthropist Walter Bechtler
  • Black Form - Dedicated to the Missing Jews designed in 1987 for the Skulptur.Projekte in Münster, since 1989 in Hamburg- Altona
  • Untitled, 2006/2007, place-bound two-part mural (50 x 6 m) in the Mercatorhalle in Duisburg
  • Open Cubes, 1991 sculpture made of aluminum square tube, painted white, Gallusanlage in Frankfurt am Main
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